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upstart writes:

NASA's big rocket faces its last test before launching:

After two weeks of preparatory work on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, NASA is ready to put its large new rocket and its complex plumbing system to the test. This will be the final major rehearsal before the space agency declares that, after 11 long years and tens of billions of dollars in development costs, the Space Launch System is finally ready to fly.

The "wet dress rehearsal" is slated to begin at 5 pm ET (21:00 UTC) on Friday, when the launch control teams will arrive on console at the Launch Control Center. At that point, engineers and technicians will begin to power up the Orion spacecraft and the rocket itself. But the real action will not take place until Sunday.

At around 6 am ET, a team from NASA and the launch vehicle's contractors will enter a "launch day" countdown; shortly thereafter, they will start to fuel the rocket's core stage with liquid oxygen. The loading of liquid hydrogen will begin about an hour later. NASA has posted a tentative schedule with key milestones on its website.

After a series of holds, NASA plans to resume its countdown toward launch at 2:30 pm ET on Sunday and continue until about T-10 seconds, with the test ending before igniting the rocket's four main engines, which once powered NASA's space shuttle. If all goes well, the test will wrap up by around 5 pm on Sunday.

[...] So will all go well? During a call with reporters on Tuesday, senior NASA officials seemed fairly confident that the wet dress test would go off smoothly. However, they acknowledged that this is the first time the entire rocket and spacecraft will be handled and fueled in concert with its ground systems and the extensive software to manage it all. So yes, they acknowledged, things could go wrong.

About a week after the test is complete, NASA officials said they expect to be able to set a launch date for the Artemis 1 mission, which will fly an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon. Presently, this test flight will happen no earlier than June.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://curlybracket.net/2022/03/31/internet-kids.html

I wanted to understand how kids between 10 and 18 conceive the internet. Surely, we have seen a generation that we call "digital natives" grow up with the internet. Now, there is a younger generation who grows up with pervasive technology, such as smartphones, smart watches, virtual assistants and so on. And only a few of them have parents who work in IT or engineering...

Pervasive technology contributes to the idea that the internet is immaterial

With their search engine website design, Google has put in place an extremely simple and straightforward user interface. Since then, designers and psychologists have worked on making user interfaces more and more intuitive to use. The buzzwords are "usability" and "user experience design". Besides this optimization of visual interfaces, haptic interfaces have evolved as well, specifically on smartphones and tablets where hand gestures have replaced more clumsy external haptic interfaces such as a mouse. And beyond interfaces, the devices themselves have become smaller and slicker. While in our generation many people have experienced opening a computer tower or a laptop to replace parts, with the side effect of seeing the parts the device is physically composed of, the new generation of end user devices makes this close to impossible, essentially transforming these devices into black boxes, and further contributing to the idea that the internet they are being used to access with would be something entirely intangible.

But it seems that some things don't change...

Question: Imagine you could make the internet better for everyone. What would you do first?

Asked what she would change if she could, the 9 year old girl advocated for a global usage limit of the internet in order to protect the human brain. Also, she said, her parents spend way too much time on their phones and people should rather spend more time with their children.

Three of the interviewees agreed that they see way too many advertisements and two of them would like ads to disappear entirely from the web. The other one said that she doesn't want to see ads, but that ads are fine if she can at least click them away.

If we could start again, what design changes would you make for the 'new' internet and how would you want it to be used?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Chaos theory provides hints for controlling the weather:

While weather predictions have reached levels of high accuracy thanks to methods such as supercomputer-based simulations and data assimilation, where observational data is incorporated into simulations, scientists have long hoped to be able to control the weather. Research in this area has intensified due to climate change, which has led to more extreme weather events such as torrential rain and storms.

There are methods at present for weather modification, but they have had limited success. Seeding the atmosphere to induce rain has been demonstrated, but it is only possible when the atmosphere is already in a state where it might rain. Geoengineering projects have been envisioned, but have not been carried out due to concerns about what unpredicted long-term effects they might have.

As a promising approach, researchers from the RIKEN team have looked to chaos theory to create realistic possibilities for mitigating weather events such as torrential rain. Specifically, they have focused on a phenomenon known as a butterfly attractor, proposed by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorentz, one of the founders of modern chaos theory. Essentially, this refers to a system that can adopt one of two orbits that look like the wings of a butterfly, but can change the orbits randomly based on small fluctuations in the system.

Journal Reference:
Miyoshi, Takemasa, Sun, Qiwen. Control simulation experiment with Lorenz's butterfly attractor [open], Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-29-133-2022)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Researchers used a decommissioned satellite to broadcast hacker TV:

Independent researchers and the United States military have become increasingly focused on orbiting satellites' potential security vulnerabilities in recent years. These devices, which are built primarily with durability, reliability, and longevity in mind, were largely never intended to be ultra-secure. But at the ShmooCon security conference in Washington, DC, on Friday, embedded device security researcher Karl Koscher raised questions about a different phase of a satellite's life cycle: What happens when an old satellite is being decommissioned and transitioning to a "graveyard orbit"?

Koscher and his colleagues received permission last year to access and broadcast from a Canadian satellite known as Anik F1R, launched to support Canadian broadcasters in 2005 and designed for 15 years of use. The satellite's coverage extends below the US southern border and out to Hawaii and the easternmost part of Russia. The satellite will move to its graveyard orbit soon, and nearly all other services that use it have already migrated to a new satellite. But while the researchers could still talk to the satellite using special access to an uplink license and transponder slot lease, Koscher had the opportunity to take over and broadcast to the Northern Hemisphere.

"My favorite thing was actually seeing it work!" Koscher tells WIRED. "It's kind of unreal to go from making a video stream to having it broadcast across all of North America."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

EU draft law adds security checks to all crypto transactions:

The European Parliament has taken the first steps for new legislation against money-laundering that covers cryptocurrency transactions, which are an important part of illicit activities today.

Members of the European Parliament from the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) have agreed on adopting (with 93 votes in favor, 14 against, and 14 abstentions) draft legislation for more transparent crypto asset transactions.

"Under the new requirements agreed by MEPs, all transfers of crypto-assets will have to include information on the source of the asset and its beneficiary, information that is to be made available to the competent authorities," reads the Parliament's announcement.

The new rules will cover transactions from private-held cryptocurrency wallets without considering transaction thresholds, which erases any limits for anonymous transactions - previous proposal allowed up to €1000 to be transferred without giving any details about the sender and the recipient.

The reasoning behind this is that transaction thresholds make no sense for regulating cryptocurrency assets because they can be easily circumvented due to their virtual nature. Simply put, it would be practically viable for money launderers to perform numerous transactions under the set threshold.

"Illicit flows in crypto-assets move largely undetected across Europe and the world, which makes them an ideal instrument for ensuring anonymity," commented Ernest Urtasun of the Greens Party.

"As illustrated by all the recent money-laundering scandals, from the Panama Papers to the Pandora Papers, criminals thrive where rules allowing for confidentiality allow for secrecy and anonymity. With this proposal for a regulation, the EU will close this loophole."

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The new message is really cool, but we need to have a serious discussion about whether we should be trying to contact extraterrestrials.

An international team of scientists has formulated an updated, binary-coded message that could eventually be transmitted to aliens in our galaxy. It's jam-packed with details, including the chemical makeup of humans, a map of Earth, and even our precise location in the Milky Way. What could possibly go wrong?

The Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG) message, as it's called, is an update to the Arecibo message of 1974. Indeed, it's been nearly 50 years since science popularizer Carl Sagan and SETI pioneer Frank Drake crafted their famous message to extraterrestrials, so an update makes a lot of sense, given the many advancements in digital technology since that time. A paper describing the new message was recently uploaded to the arXiv, and it's currently awaiting peer review.

Gizmodo

[Also Covered By]: VICE, ScienceDaily

Should we broadcast such messages or not ? What do you think ?

Journal Reference:
Jonathan H. Jiang, Hanjie Li, Matthew Chong, et al. A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects, Galaxies (DOI: 10.3390/galaxies10020055)

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://courieronsunday.com/news/asia-news/a-new-city-built-upon-data-takes-shape-in-south-korea/

Samsung Smart-village in Korea gathering all the data to, what I can only assume, the perfect happy orwellian village/city of the future. All hooked up for friendly data gathering/harvesting on and of the ideal citizens.

[...] Unmanned Solution, a company of 35 employees founded in 2008, is providing cleaning robots for the village, and the South Korean start-up Superbin, with 89 employees, provides garbage disposal services and recycling technology.

K-Water is the major player in this development as it is using its latest technology to not only transform the wetlands (making them developable by bringing in tons of sand and sinking concrete poles), but also to use the water in the Nakdong River for hydropower, drinking water and other uses. The hydropower will energize everything from homes to streetlights to sprinkler systems in the planned public areas.

With extensive data being compiled for help in health care planning, concerns about privacy and the sharing of personal information with governments and businesses have been muted so far.

"I haven't heard of any complaints so far from residents, but I know that all around the world people can be defiant about giving out their personal information," Mr. Min said. Nevertheless, he said, "a committee is drafting privacy guidelines and all of the info is encrypted."

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.hagerty.com/media/advice/a-few-things-to-know-before-you-steal-my-914/

Dear Thief,

Welcome to my Porsche 914. I imagine that at this point (having found the door unlocked) your intention is to steal my car. Don't be encouraged by this; the tumblers sheared-off in 1978. I would have locked it up if I could, so don't think you're too clever or that I'm too lazy. However, now that you're in the car, there are a few things you're going to need to know. First, the battery is disconnected, so slide-hammering my ignition switch is not your first step. I leave the battery disconnected, not to foil hoodlums such as yourself, but because there is a mysterious current drain from the 40-year-old German wiring harness that I can't locate and/or fix. So, connect the battery first. Good luck finding the engine cover release. Or the engine, for that matter.

Now, you can skip your slide hammer. The ignition switch's tumblers are so worn that any flat-bladed screwdriver or pair of scissors will do. Don't tell anyone.

Once you've figured that out and try to start the car, you'll run into some trouble. The car is most likely in reverse gear, given that the parking brake cable froze up sometime during the Carter administration. Since there is not a clutch safety switch on the starting circuit, make sure to press the clutch down before you try to crank the engine. (I don't want you running into my other car in the driveway.) This is doubly necessary because my starter is too weak to crank the clutch-transmission input shaft assembly with any success.

Read on - I enjoyed the laugh!

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Amazon Union Scores Unexpected Win in New York Election, a First in the US:

In a first for the Amazon's US facilities, warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, have voted in favor of joining a union. The union's win, if certified by the federal labor board, adds momentum an organizing movement that's been gaining steam around the country.

The tally of of 2,654 yes votes to 2,131 no votes came after six days of in-person voting at the warehouse and an intense campaign. In the lead up to the vote, the union filed complaints to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Amazon engaged in unfair labor practices.

The Amazon Labor Union, a new group that was formed by current and former Amazon workers, emerged from workers' efforts to demand better COVID-19 protections in 2020. The group eventually began an organizing bid after some workers involved in planning walkouts were disciplined or fired. That included worker Chris Smalls, who went on to become the face of the organizing movement after his firing.

Separately, a vote on unionization at an Amazon facility in Alabama failed on Thursday, though the result could be affected when hundreds of challenged ballots are resolved.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Pfizer, Moderna vaccines aren't the same; study finds antibody differences:

The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have proven highly effective at priming our immune systems to fight the pandemic coronavirus—preventing substantial amounts of infection, severe disease, and death throughout several waves of variants. But despite their similar design and efficacy, the two vaccines are not exactly the same—and our immune systems don't respond to them in the same way.

An early hint of this came from some real-world data that found startling differences in the effectiveness of the two vaccines, despite both shots performing nearly identically in Phase III clinical trials, with efficacies of 95 percent and 94 percent. Amid last year's delta wave, a Mayo Clinic study found that Pfizer's effectiveness against infection dipped to 42 percent while Moderna's fell to 76 percent.

Both vaccines generate strong levels of neutralizing antibodies, which can bind to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells. But according to the study, the vaccines generated different antibody profiles overall. Specifically, the antibody response to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine skewed to a class of antibodies called IgG and IgM, which are often found in the blood. The Moderna vaccine, meanwhile, generated relatively elevated levels of IgA antibodies, a class of antibodies generally found on mucosal surfaces, such as the respiratory tract—where SARS-CoV-2 infections begin. Additionally, the Moderna vaccine spurred relatively higher levels of antibodies that activate immune cells called natural killer cells. It also generated higher levels of antibodies that activate immune cells called neutrophils to ingest and kill (phagocytize) invading germs.

Journal Reference:
Fernando P. Polack, Stephen J. Thomas, Nicholas Kitchin, et al. Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine [open], New England Journal of Medicine (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2034577)
Lindsey R. Baden, Hana M. El Sahly, Brandon Essink, et al. Efficacy and Safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine [open], New England Journal of Medicine (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2035389)
Just a moment..., (DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abm2311)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Following up on the initial release, NASA has added more samples and more hi-res data to its research-grade Astromaterials 3D platform. The site doesn't seem to have a New/News link, so here's part of the informal release statement:

[We are] excited to announce the public release of several exciting new features on Astromaterials 3D!

1. 20 new samples from NASA's Apollo Lunar and Antarctic Meteorite Collections
2. NASA Pins—a curated selection of surface and XCT features with brief descriptions written by NASA's Curation scientists, visible in the Pins section of the Explorer
3. The much-anticipated public release of the actual high-resolution 3D model files, now available for download from every rock's Details page

Launched to the public in December 2020, Astromaterials 3D is an information-rich visualization tool for researchers and the general public. Combining high-resolution photography, structure-from-motion photogrammetry and X-ray computed tomography, the project succeeds at producing research-grade interactive 3D models of the exterior and interior of samples in a single coordinate system. At its core, Astromaterials 3D intends to provide greater access to NASA's astromaterials collections and the incredible stories these rocks from space reveal through the study of them.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

This new ransomware targets data visualization tool Jupyter Notebook:

A new strain of Python ransomware is targeting environments using Jupyter Notebook.

Jupyter Notebook is an open source web environment for data visualization. The modular software is used to model data in data science, computing, and machine learning. The project supports over 40 programming languages and is used by companies including Microsoft, IBM, and Google, alongside numerous universities.

Aqua Security's Team Nautilus recently discovered malware that has honed in on this popular data tool.

While Jupyter Notebook allows users to share their content with trusted contacts, access to the app is secured through account credentials or tokens. However, in the same way that businesses sometimes do not secure their AWS buckets, leaving them open for anyone to view, Notebook misconfigurations have also been found.

The Python ransomware targets those that have accidentally left their environments vulnerable.

[...] A Shodan search reveals several hundred internet-facing Jupyter Notebook environments are open and accessible (although some may also be honeypots.)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

AI helps radiologists detect bone fractures:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an effective tool for fracture detection that has potential to aid clinicians in busy emergency departments, according to a study in Radiology.

Missed or delayed diagnosis of fractures on X-ray is a common error with potentially serious implications for the patient. Lack of timely access to expert opinion as the growth in imaging volumes continues to outpace radiologist recruitment only makes the problem worse.

AI may help address this problem by acting as an aid to radiologists, helping to speed and improve fracture diagnosis.

[...] Dr. Kuo cautioned that research into fracture detection by AI remains in a very early, pre-clinical stage. Only a minority of the studies that she and her colleagues looked at evaluated the performance of clinicians with AI assistance, and there was only one example where an AI was evaluated in a prospective study in a clinical environment.

"It remains important for clinicians to continue to exercise their own judgment," Dr. Kuo said. "AI is not infallible and is subject to bias and error."

Journal References:
Rachel Y. L. Kuo, Conrad Harrison, Terry-Ann Curran, et al. Artificial Intelligence in Fracture Detection: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Radiology (DOI: 211785)
Jérémie F. Cohen, Matthew D. F. McInnes. Deep Learning Algorithms to Detect Fractures: Systematic Review Shows Promising Results but Many Limitations, Radiology (DOI: 212966)

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://www.lupinia.net/writing/tech/scammed.htm

When discussing scams and social engineering attacks, it's easy for security researchers and experts to present information in a way that implies the victims of these attacks should have known better. It's an attitude borne of biases that many engineers have - myself included - but it's unhelpful and counter-productive. And, as much as we may like to think we'd handle these situations so much better, that's just not true. Security experts - even those with professional experience in social engineering - are not immune to scams. As an example of this, I'd like to share the story of a scam I fell for recently.

The Call

In the early afternoon, after starting my day with an extremely tiring 2-hour meeting, I kicked back for a much-needed break before digging into some writing projects. However, my meditation was interrupted by my phone ringing. Which, in and of itself, was noteworthy - I use a complex web of forwarding numbers and obfuscation to avoid giving out a real phone number as much as possible, and the only people who have my real phone number rarely call me, especially during the day. I checked the caller ID, and it was my bank, Wells Fargo (I know, I know; trust me, they were not my first choice).

I answered, the guy said he was calling from Wells Fargo's Fraud Prevention Department, calling to verify some transactions. He verified my name, he had the last four digits of my debit card number, and everything generally seemed to follow the normal script of a transaction verification call. He rattled off three separate transactions, totalling close to a thousand US dollars, all of which were things I didn't recognize, in a city I've never been to, 1300 miles (2100km) from where I live. So, yeah, definitely fraudulent transactions. He said they'd cancel my debit card and send a new one, and verified the address on file - which he also already had, without me needing to provide it. I've had a bunch of these calls over the years, so nothing weird so far. I figured we were about finished with a very routine and normal fraud call, but it turned out we were just getting started.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Folding design leads to heart sensor with smaller profile:

As advances in wearable devices push the amount of information they can provide consumers, sensors increasingly have to conform to the contours of the body. One approach applies the principles of kirigami to give sensors the added flexibility.

Researchers want to leverage the centuries-old art of cutting paper into designs to develop a sensor sheet that can stretch and breathe with the skin while collecting electrocardiographic data. In Applied Physics Reviews, the sensor made by researchers in Japan uses cuts in a film made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) printed with silver electrodes to fit on a person's chest to monitor his or her heart.

"In terms of wearability, by applying kirigami structure in a PET film, due to PET deformation and bending, the film can be stretchable, so that the film can follow skin and body movement like a bandage," said author Kuniharu Takei, from Osaka Prefecture University. "In addition, since kirigami structure has physical holes in a PET film, skin can be easily breathed through the holes."

Unlike the related origami, which involves strictly paper folding, the art of kirigami extends its methods to paper cutting as well. Such a technique allows relatively stiff materials, like PET, to adapt to their surfaces.

Journal Reference:
Yan Xuan, Hyuga Hara, Satoko Honda, et al. Wireless, minimized, stretchable, and breathable electrocardiogram sensor system, Applied Physics Reviews (DOI: 10.1063/5.0082863)

Original Submission